Elite / Frontier KS Update #3: Procedural Generation Video

[Kipper]

I agree with that. One thing I would say is in Frontier, there were certain systems where you always felt entirely safe, notably Sol and Barnard's Star. It would be good to have the odd attack happen in those systems. Following on from that, it would be good to have more police patrols in deep space, so that 'someone help me' actually does something...

I agree. I'd imagine the core/safe systems to be well policed, but only offer the chance for really very small profits per item - so those that are making money in the core systems are hauling hundreds or thousands of tonnes of cargo and making a few credits per tonne.

Starting out with a much smaller ship of course, making your name and your fortune at a faster pace would require you to venture slightly further afield and take more risks.

It would be good to see that there's no guarantee of safety even if 'safe' space but a guarantee of a police response, faster and with more/better ships - so piracy would still be possible but you'd have to be quick about it.

 

[SuperG]

Procedural is the only way for the scope of massive ammont of content this game must offer. With out it you need all or even more of the artist in the game industy to do it manualy. That why those heavy content rich conventional games need triple A funding. For the large artist force. And a efficent productive content pipeline.

DB hit the nail right on the spot. I have seen from the old demo scene where procedural method is also used often also a long time ago. That scene look very detailed and a feel of used erosive and level of dirth over it. Give it a very real life feel to it. Now still not seen in the latest ganes even directX11 titels. So I believe procedural beat hand modeld textured way. But it is not easy.

Also there is specialised middleware like speedtree.

I have the confidence that a procedural veteran like DB can pull it off.

It is just a matter of enough ingredients as DB calls them. Having more then artist use then it looks better. But also having a huge variation and huge amount of content assets. Wenn done right you replace a army of super conventional artists.